A FAREWELL TO EAVESDROPPING

                   

                    

                  

                                

    

     I’ve always loved eavesdropping.

     I know it’s rude, nasty and sneaky. But that’s never bothered me. The snoop in me has always ignored any guilty hiccups I might have. Of course, unlike Facebook and Google, I don’t do it to exploit people. Nor do I eavesdrop on everyone everywhere like our government. I don’t need righteous justifications like ‘national security’ or ‘profitable growth’ to invade someone’s personal life.

      I eavesdrop because it’s fun and makes me feel, well, kind of powerful. And it occasionally teaches me something. That’s a kick too.

      Over the years, I’ve eavesdropped in bars, in men’s rooms, at baseball games and auctions, on a hayride, in a hospital emergency room and in a motel while a married salesman and his girlfriend were having rough sex next door. (The noise couldn’t be ignored so that might not count as true eavesdropping.)

      I’ve also developed ways to avoid being caught. The best is to seem totally immersed in a book or a magazine. (I prefer The New Yorker because it implies a touch of integrity.) People might glance at you once or twice, but that’s about it. Still, to be safe I always turn the page every few minutes. This technique can also be useful for discouraging chatty seatmates on airplanes or guys on the next barstool who think their life stories are interesting. (Or you can just say ‘Bugger off.’ and take your chances.)

       When I don’t have anything to read, however, I simply look as if I’m deep in thought; reflecting on theoretical aspects of the Higgs boson or pondering the advantages of a Walmart Lay-Away Plan. Once in blue moon, of course, my target’s eyes and mine meet accidentally; and then I’m in danger of being discovered. So I switch roles instantly. I look back at him/her with a weak smile, empty eyes and slightly slack jaw. I call it my Forrest Gump look. It works every time. The other person invariably looks away, satisfied that I’m an idiot and couldn’t possibly understand what’s being said anyway.

      

        But here’s the tragedy: nearly all my clandestine eavesdropping pleasures – my secret senses of power and superior knowledge – have vanished. For all practical purposes, eavesdropping is dead; cruelly murdered and mutilated by cellular technology.

       And so, with right and with reason on my side, I have come –with one exception – to hate cell phones.  

      

       Consider the two girls having dinner at the table next to mine last night: each was either talking on her cell or texting, pausing only to pick up a fork or to take a sip of wine. The most significant exchange between them came when one looked at the other and said: “Kim says hi.”

      Or consider the six local bus passengers I saw sitting side by side, totally lost; three texting, two talking into smart phones, and one head-down listening to music. I could have stripped nude or hanged myself from the handrail and no-one would have noticed.

      Then, of course, there’s the other side of the coin: morons who shout into their phones as if the person on the other end is stone deaf. Or who turn the speaker function on and broadcast hip-hop or rap or whatever at arm’s length. People like that are so removed from a sense of common courtesy – of simple decency -- that they’re not worth discussing. If I had my way, I’d simply cut out their tongues and puncture their eardrums.

     So I hope you can understand how I feel. Cellphones have ruined eye-to-eye communication. They’ve made privacy (and often, intimacy) into a loud broadcast medium. They’ve inured people to the daily realities and moment-to-moment events surrounding them. And they’ve made eavesdropping extinct.

      And yet, all is not lost. There is one ray of light in the dismal Twittery night; one life raft floating on the ocean of Facebook garbage; one gemstone hidden in the endless strip mine of cellular blah blah.

      I call it the ‘driplet’.

      The driplet is a shard of cell conversation – a mere fragment – overheard in passing. It can be a phrase, a sentence or perhaps even a paragraph. But it must be incomplete, and as opposed to a dribble which is inconsequential, it must suggest something that fires your imagination. In other words, it must prick your natural curiosity. It must scream out for a plot; a scenario, a mystery. A driplet – to be succinct -- must be drama in a drip.

      Here, as examples, are three driplets overheard on a recent trip to Manhattan:

      From an overweight and somewhat disheveled Englishman walking through the diamond district on West 48^th Street:

           “Good God, all they sell here are diamonds. Can’t she be satisfied

            with something less?”

      And from a girl in battered Converse sneakers and pink knee socks standing alone in the rain in Washington Square:

            “FuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyouNO I

             WILL NOT LISTEN!fuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyou ..” etc.

      And finally, my favorite from a well-dressed guy with a fancy briefcase walking fast in the garment district:

             “I’m telling ya’ .. this guy’s legit. He’s the financial advisor to the

              Dalai Lama.”

      Now ask yourself. Don’t those three tiny driplets suggest the human condition at its most vulnerable and its most gullible? Can’t you launch whole flights of imagination around them? If at least one of them doesn’t get your creative juices flowing, then your mind – I’m sorry to say -- has calcified; and you must seek help right away.

       Check yourself into The Monty Python Clinic of the Subconscious or the George Carlin

Happiness Center before it’s too late.

      And good luck to you. I mean it … well, mostly.

                      AFTER DINNER MINTS

If you’ve heard a driplet or two that’s stuck to your ribs, contribute it/them to the Comment section of this blog. Maybe we can develop an almanac of memorable driplets or even start a contest for the best driplet of 2015. If successful enough, the word itself might even be recognized in the next edition of Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary.

This driplet just in, overheard from a Wall Street type vacationing in Key West. “This chick thinks she’s an IPO.” That’s short, in case you didn’t know, for Initial Public Offering. The mind boggles wondering whether she has a share price.

I hope you’ll ask friends to read this blog. It can be accessed by googling keywestwind or by going to http://keywestwind.blogspot.com

                      Many thanks and Happy Holidays.